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Comments · 98

  1. Re:Fair use on Report From The 2600 Appeal Hearing · · Score: 1
    You cannot claim that the MPAA has taken away your ability to use the work in non-infringing ways.

    We're claiming that the DMCA has taken away this ability.

    Many high priced periodicals are printed in such a way as to prevent copying. Does this interfere with your rights? No.

    My paycheck is printed on paper that prints VOID across the check if I copy it. I should call my employer and demand that they stop doing this because it infringes on my rights!

    Nobody is asking the MPAA to change the format of DVDs. The MPAA is asking the court to stop others from creating devices, (or even discussing devices) that allow the public to engage in fair use activities with the contents of DVDs.

    The point is not that we're complaining that we have a hard time making (legal) photocopies of our checks, but that our employer is complaining because someone invented a photocopier that works well enough for our (legal) purposes.

  2. Solution to MS Access problem #1 on Microsoft Tech Suport vs Psychic Friends · · Score: 5
    It's a shame that MS technical support couldn't answer this question:

    Our research began when we called Microsoft regarding a bug that we had detected when executing queries which pulled data from a Sybase Server into Microsoft Access. If we used the same Access database to query two databases on the same server, we found that all of the queries aimed at the second database that we queried were sent to the first database that we had queried. This problem existed no matter which database we queried first.

    The problem is that the programmers were undoubtedly using the same DSN for both connections.

    They could have solved the problem by creating a second uniquely named DSN in the ODBC control panel and using it for their second connection to the database. This is a common mistake, and should be obvious to the MS help desk.

    That will be $55, please.

  3. Re:It is a good thing...(flamebait?!?!?) on Could We Have Had Cell Phones In The 60s? · · Score: 1
    What I wants to know is...

    What do the radiation do to yo' hair?

  4. Re:Read the patent on Worlds.com Patents Quake-like Games? Kinda. · · Score: 1
    It was British Telecom that holds a patent on hyperlinks, not the BBC.

    While they sound the same, it's a little like confusing AT&T with NBC.

  5. How authors get paid without IP on MPAA Goes After Gnutella · · Score: 2
    That's an interesting argument, and a question that should be answered.

    What is it about books that makes people pay money for them? Part of a book's worth is the information that it contains, the other part of its worth is the convenient package that it comes in, allowing the purchaser to tote the information around, quickly find the point where they left off, etc.

    Obviously this "book" product is a combination of two activities, "book writing" and "book printing (and distributiuon, etc.)."

    So if it became legal to take any text that you find anywhere and print it up and distribute it in book form, the authors would all starve to death, right?

    Maybe not.

    If the above scenario happened, there would be no financial incentive for authors to write... for a while. However the printers would quickly run out of new material to print (having re-printed all of each-others products) collapsing their own market. At that point any printer that wanted to keep his business afloat would start paying authors to write stuff.

    Not all of the printers would do that... some would just take that new content and re-print it in some format or distribution that is more convenient to some segment of the market.

    That would create two distinct types of book printing businesses: A first that seeks to make money by developing (or funding the development of) new content, and another that seeks to make money by formatting and distributing existing content in ways that others haven't.

    Unless I'm mistaken the result would be: authors getting paid, publishers making money, and consumers getting choices that they don't have today.

    It's too terrible to contemplate, isn't it?

  6. Re:4.1s? Bah, McLaren F1 can do 0-60 in 3.1 secs ! on Electric Car Bests Ferrari F550 In 0-60mph · · Score: 1
    The Hayabusa is considerably slower than the CBR when it's sitting in the shop having its guts put back together after the cam chain tensioner fails.

    So, falcon-boy, what is your best e/t on that bike?

    I ran a 11.16 at Gateway Int'l last fall. It was hard as hell to keep the front wheel down. I know that some motor journalist that you read can knock a second or more off that on a well prepped bike, but what can you do?

    Don't it suck to be shown up by an old guy in K-Mart clothes?

  7. Re:4.1s? Bah, McLaren F1 can do 0-60 in 3.1 secs ! on Electric Car Bests Ferrari F550 In 0-60mph · · Score: 1

    Ever heard of a thing called "rotational inertia?" You see, the spinning wheels are what keeps the bike upright. The faster they spin, the more they want to stay upright. That's why two wheeled vehicles fall over when they stop. The whole "pebble at a hundred miles an hour" thing is the product of non-analytical thinking.

  8. Re:4.1s? Bah, McLaren F1 can do 0-60 in 3.1 secs ! on Electric Car Bests Ferrari F550 In 0-60mph · · Score: 1
    ...and, if you continually shorten the course, the smaller lighter vehicle will always win.

    A remote controlled car costing less than $200 with an eight volt battery will smoke your ugly Hayabusa in a 40 yd. race. That's because it only weighs 3 pounds.

    So how many times has your dealer replaced your cam chain tensioner? Have you ever put soft bags on with an aftermarket exhaust, or are you afraid your sub-frame will collapse onto the rear wheel?

    If you were anywhere near as cool as you thought you were, you'd be riding a CBR1100XX. Not as fast, but not nearly as ugly, either, and the maintenance schedule is a dream compared to your "Eye-Abuser."

    Flame me if you must, but deep down you know you want a Blackbird.

  9. Re:Why not "Nip it in the bud?" on Peer-to-Peer Copyright Issues · · Score: 2
    I think that the music industry in particular should NOT get all hot and bothered about the software for sharing (insert file type here) files or the files themselves, rather, target the applications that create the files. Does any of the software that can convert a file from CD to any format have to pay a license to the recording industry? If there is should it be more? Should software of this nature be more controlled as to who has access to it, should there be registration?

    This argument assumes that all audio data stored on all CDs is copyrighted material owned by someone other than the possessor of the CD.

    That is a very bad assumption to make. Following that assumption, you could easily surmise that no one other than the recording industry has any business writing data to a CD. We would have no CD writers, no media software, and no capability to record or edit video or audio for any reason whatsoever.

  10. Re:HUNT THE WUMPUS on Can You Suggest Any Non-Zero Sum Games? · · Score: 1

    Is Wumpus the shameful part, or is it the fact that you write VB?

  11. Re:I remember this.... on The Challenger · · Score: 1
    So are you saying that NASA gave a dishonest assessment of the risk of total failure?

    Do you mean to suggest that back in their offices, they came up with a calculation of risk that was much higher, but they then fudged it to make it sound better?

    So who was it that did this?

    I have to agree with the first guy. It's a damn shame that the Challenger failure paused the space program for so long, and soured our national quest for space exploration. There was no good reason for crippling the space program the way we did.

    To put the Challenger failure in perspective, remember that thousands of people die every day in automobile accidents. Hundreds of people perish at a time in our many airline disasters every year. It is not at all unheard of for twice as many people to die in a single vehicle highway accident as died when Challenger failed.

    People die routinely. It's a fact of life. We all have to go one way or another. You either get over it, or you're in for a losing battle.

    So why was the space program put on hold for so long? Were the astronauts refusing to fly? Not a chance. Were the technicians unable to solve the O-ring problems? Of course they were. So what was it?

    It was the politicians' lust for fingerpointing and blame.

  12. In defense of drug companies on Ordinary Skill In The Art · · Score: 2
    From Ullman's article: My personal view is that it is great that R, S, and A were able to profit from a patent for a novel, nonobvious, and useful encryption scheme, but less wonderful that pharmaceutical companies are able to profit from their inventions to the extent that poor nations are dying of controllable HIV because they can't afford what the drug companies demand.

    This sort of rant, wheter it's from the Vice President of the United States, or from an expert in Computer Science, completely ignores the benefits of medical research by private organizations. The R&D that created every new "miracle drug" was funded by the investors and bond holders of private companies. If we remove the profit motives and protections from the pharmaceutical industry, who will invest? Just where do you suppose new drugs will come from? The simple truth is that if pharmaceutical companies' profits are diminished, investors will pump money into other business sectors, and we won't get any Viagras, Claritins or Flo-Nazes.

    What's the alternative? Entirely government sponsored health research? Do you suppose that the government would use our tax dollars with anywhere near the efficiency that publicly held corporations would? How would the research priorities be set? Would we postpone research on cures for more widespread ailments so that we could focus on "celebrity diseaeses" whose cures would further someone's political career?

    I suggest that people get off the drug companies' backs lest they find themselves lingering under socialized medical research.

  13. Re: Re:Seiko Automatic Watch on Ten Technologies That Shouldn't Have Died? · · Score: 1

    Lucky you. I've had mine for four years, and now it won't hold a charge, no matter how many naked jumping jacks I do.

  14. Best game for programmers - Carnage Heart on Up, Up, Down, Down: Part Four · · Score: 4
    Maybe three or four years ago, a Japanaese company named Artdink (famous in Japan for railroad simulators) published a playstation game called "Carnage Heart."

    The game was a mixture of simple turn-based strategy and tactical cobat between two teams of competing robots. The robots were the typical "mechs" in several different varieties, two legged, four legged, tank treaded and flying. The innovative part of the game was that instead of controlling a mech, like a FPS, the player coded the software that dictated how the mechs reacted to their environments.

    The programming system was simple and brilliant. Starting with a blank "card", the player placed and configured "chips" that created a sort of flowchart. The chips did all sorts of things like checking environmental conditions (presence of enemies, presence of friendlies, presence of ordinance, fuel remaining, weapons remaining), branching the program logic, moving the mech, firing the weapons and communicating with friendlies. The strategic part of the game was setting up factories, building the mechs, putting together squads and directing their movements on the battle maps.

    I spent hours and hours of my free time playing the game (which was fascinating to watch, the game, not me playing it), but what's worse, I spent plenty of time away from the console diagramming new software configurations to try out later. Fortunately, my boss at the time was incapable of distinguishing my stacks of graph-paper flow charts from the work I was supposed to be doing.

  15. Re:Immature little brats on Catch Me If You Can · · Score: 1

    Just who, precisely, is hurt or inconvenienced in this scenario? You're the one suggesting physical harm to people with the "ipecac" trick. That makes me think that you are sick in the mind, you weirdo. I'm going to stay the hell away from whichever McDonalds you work at, you uptight, murderous deviate.

  16. Amusing Social Engineering on Catch Me If You Can · · Score: 1

    When I'm in need of a laugh, I walk over to the McDonald's restaurant next to my office and tape a hand-written sign to the drive-thru menu that reads "Speaker broken - Please YELL loudly." Sometimes there are cars in line when I walk over and tape the sign up. I just give them a sheepish smile and wave. Without any hesitation, the patrons drive up and scream their orders into the speaker. Then I go in to the restaurant and order a soda at the counter. Pure comedy.

  17. Re:Its 'dulux', anonymous... on What Do You Think Of The Delux DVD? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, if they have a /. user ID then that makes them legit, thanks to /.'s comprehensive screening process.

  18. More details in English here on Honda Creates Walking Robot · · Score: 2

    Check out this link for a complete English press release: Honda One-Ups Furby

  19. Re:!keyboard==!code on Open Source Programming On The UK PSX2 · · Score: 1

    USB ports on front of PS2 + USB keyboard = code

  20. Re:Component Video Out on Is The PS2 Your Next DVD Player? · · Score: 1

    Are you high?
    I'm looking at component video cables for the PS2 on Amazon.com.
    Here's the link: Component Cables
    I repeat, are you high?

  21. buggy on What's That In Your Keyboard? · · Score: 1

    A long time ago, I developed a PC-based medication dispensing system for use in drug addiction treatment clincs. The medication dispensed was a syrupy suspension of methadone, necessarily thickened with sweeteners because of the extreme unpalatability of methadone hydrochlorate.

    The clinic administrators from a large hospital system in NYC called me one day and asked me what to do about keyboard bugs. Thinking they were having some kind of system problem, I asked them to further describe the nature of their question. I was horrified to hear that they meant actual bugs in the keyboards.

    It seems that in the normal course of dispensing medication, droplets of methadose were making their way into the nurses' keyboards. Roaches were feasting on the stuff, and had taken up more or less permanent residence in the keyboards. Apperently, the narcotics were enough to make the roaches really lethargic, so they didn't seem to mind being hammered by keystrokes. They just kind of came and went as they pleased, but more often they stayed. After a while, when a keyboard reached its maximum occupancy, the keys became inoperable.

    Rather than purchase new keyboards and vinyl key covers, the hospital elected to gather all the keyboards, put them in a closet, set off a bug bomb, and empty the keyboards.

    I am SO glad I am not their support technician.

  22. VTEC on Ars Reviews Honda Insight · · Score: 1

    The article incorrectly states that Honda implemented a variable valve lift system on its Civic motors, calling this system VTEC. The VTEC valve train is actually a variable valve TIMING system. Toyota's VVTL-i system, available on the Echo, Celica, MR2 and Corolla this year, provides variable lift and timing, the first variable lift system that I am aware of.

  23. Re:Warranty? on Memory Problems (And Fixes) For Palm-OS Devices · · Score: 1

    What makes you think that there are _any_ good IIIxe units out there? Palm's web site says something ambiguous about the problem being limited to a small percentage of 8mb units, but they don't say what percentage of IIIxes are affected. I know my IIIxe has the problem. Four times in the last three months, it has locked up... that's the bug writing over applications or OS. It takes almost half an hour to do a complete restore. Two or three times a week, I get an error message from the HotSync manager... I bet that's the bug writing over my data. I am a little bit miffed at Palm, because their FAQ goes on and on about how "trivial" this bug is and how easy it will be to fix and how amazingly unlikely it is that YOUR Palm product is affected. They do not, however, offer any real description of the symptoms, nor do they offer any advice on how to get by while waiting for a IIIxe patch.